“It’s back to school time!
Guys. I hated school. Like to the point that I can’t even step foot in a Target between August and September because I get the dry heaves.
So this book has some okay career advice. I mean, it’s good, it’s just that advice is always hard to take. I appreciate the attempt to make it palatable, and I do think it offers one good point, which is that you should pursue stuff you’re interested in, even if it doesn’t have a strong A to B career path. Because hell, you probably won’t end up in the career you planned on anyway. I don’t know if I work with ANYONE who has done that.
Anyway, back to school.
This book made me think about school and why I hated it and what I would tell my young self if I had to go back and give myself some advice on getting through school. Because I can’t honestly say I was bullied or anything like that. Some people weren’t very nice, but that was more about using their status cachet to copy homework or something. Nobody ever tried to beat me up. Which is a good thing because they could have EASILY beaten me up.
What would I tell myself?
1. Don’t mess around being in plays and junk like that.
Great for some kids, not for you, Pete. Those are not your people. They smoke and make out. You’re really bad at both of those things.
2. You’ll have to take about 5 dumps at school.
Which isn’t bad. But when it happens, just accept it.
3. Don’t worry, you won’t have to double-date in adulthood.
It just becomes going out and sometimes couples come together and sometimes they don’t. In this one instance, it does, in fact, Get Better.
4. Don’t trade Blade on DVD for Blade on VHS just because you don’t have a DVD player at the time of the offer.
About 6 weeks of patience will really pay off here.
5. Columbia House will completely collapse.
You can probably just bilk them out of penny movies plus free tote bags without fear of repercussion.
6. When this movie called The Matrix comes out, just go see it. Don’t download trailers on the internet, which takes hours anyway. Just go and watch it and you’ll have more fun.
7. Some of the best times of your life will be waking up early on a Saturday morning with a video game you rented waiting in the Nintendo.
It sounds sad, but you’ll get over worrying about that part. Man, enjoy that. Milk that shit.
8. You could probably curse more.
Nobody cares. Especially in school papers. Nobody even really reads that shit.
9. There’s a page in that little green trig book where there are two tugboat operators named Yank Hardy and Frank Pullyum.
Find that and laugh and laugh because math is dumb and names that sound like masturbation are hilarious. This page will sustain you through many math classes.
10. Programming Drug Wars into your TI-83 calculator is why you had such a hard time with derivatives. And it’s totally worth it because nobody cares about that, meanwhile everyone cares about the fast-paced world of drug sales. There’s like a primetime TV show about it now.
Overall, I guess the message is that school totally blows and there’s not much you can do about it, so I guess enjoy everything else as much as you can.”